Four things you should know about the Fukushima nuclear disaster

The Fukushima nuclear disaster that began on March 11, 2011 was a scary time for the whole world. Some early reports even warned about radiation being carried on the wind as far as the west coasts of the USA and Canada, and many international companies flew their staff out of Japan. In dramatic attempts to cool the reactors, the Japanese military dumped tonnes of seawater from helicopters.

For many of us, the urgency of these moments has long ago faded; a lot of things happened in the intervening two years. But the Fukushima nuclear disaster never really ended. Although there are many things about Fukushima that are unbelievable and unfair, here a few shocking things that you may not be aware of:

1. Former employees of both General Electric and Hitachi became ‘whistleblowers’ to expose design and production flaws in parts of the Fukushima reactors.

As early as the 1970s, former General Electric employee Dale Bridenbaugh went public with flaws in the GE reactor designs being used to build Fukushima. Then following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, former Hitachi nuclear engineer Mitsuhiko Tanaka exposed the illegal cover-up of a construction problem in one of the pressure vessels built by Hitachi, "When the stakes are raised to such a height, a company will not choose what is safe and legal."

That is the nature of the nuclear industry and Tanaka’s story is yet another, very scary, example of how far nuclear companies will go to put their own profits before safety.

Imagine being forced to leave your home so suddenly that you have to leave pets behind. Then imagine being told you may not be able to live in your home again for many decades to come. Even going back to get some belongings may be difficult because it is dangerous for you to be inside your home for long periods of time, you are exposed to too much radiation. You will wait for two years, but during this time you will never receive enough compensation to completely rebuild your life somewhere safe.

That is reality now for some 160,000 people who were forced to evacuate their homes. Two years later many of these people still live in temporary housing, have lost their jobs and are separated from their communities and families.

Evacuees have been living in limbo for two years already, now to add to this burden their compensation money may have unwelcome conditions. Some evacuees who accepted certain compensation amounts, because they were pregnant or had small children at the time of the nuclear disaster, may have sacrificed their right to sue for further damages by taking the money. The authorities at Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) responsible for setting the terms of compensation said on one occasion that people cannot file future compensation from illnesses caused by the accident, then on another occasion the same authorities said they did not rule out future claims. (Find more details in the Fukushima Fallout report.)

The conditions that come with the compensation money are not clear to the Fukushima evacuees, causing confusion and adding to their stress. While they fill out a 60 page compensation claim form, and wait to see how much their former lives destroyed by the disaster are ‘worth’ – the profits of the nuclear companies involved, like General Electric, Hitachi and Toshiba, remain intact.

4. Two of the Fukushima reactor makers: Toshiba and Hitachi, are now making money from the disaster clean up process.

Toshiba and Hitachi are, in effect, being paid to clean up their own nuclear mess. That’s right, these companies have now made money from Fukushima twice, first from building and maintaining reactors, and then again for cleaning up after those reactors failed. What an interesting business model.

When nuclear companies are not liable for the huge costs of nuclear risk, what incentive is there for them to avoid it? None.

This unjust situation can change. India created a strong nuclear liability law in 2010, which can hold nuclear supplier companies liable for the damages of a nuclear disaster. Last week the CEO of General Electric was quoted admitting that as long as this law is in place General Electric will stay out of the nuclear business in India. When they are forced to admit it, most nuclear companies will come to the same conclusion – the cost of nuclear risk is far too high.

An important step towards making nuclear companies liable for nuclear disasters, is that the public knows and understands this unjust situation – you can help.

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(Unregistered) Aslihan
says:

Dear Archan,

Indeed contaminated water is still leaking from the plant. Experts estimate that 10,000 gallons of radioactive water leak fr...

Dear Archan,

Indeed contaminated water is still leaking from the plant. Experts estimate that 10,000 gallons of radioactive water leak from the reactors each month. TEPCO destroyed a nearby forest to make room for tanks that will eventually store 700.000 tonnes of water.

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(Unregistered) PCAH
says:

Thank you Greenpeace. The same attitudes to safety and risk are endemic in all nuclear companies. Even without a tsunami, UK nuclear site licensees have just been allowed by nuclear regulators to extend the operational lifetimes of UK AGR reactors. They have no incentive to put safety before profit, they avoid paying out for injuries to the public by leaving insurance costs to the taxpayer via government subsidies. They avoid charges of corporate manslaughter by colluding in the farcical ICRP estimate of dose/risk when the ECRR dose risk correctly forecasts the ever increasing cancer and premature death rates around all the UK nuclear sites. Heritable genetic mutations now causing health problems in third generation families will continue to cost the NHS £billions for the foreseeable (and unforseeable) future.

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(Unregistered) chris
says:

While this article was very informative and interesting. There is one serious mistake:
"When nuclear companies are not liable for the huge...

While this article was very informative and interesting. There is one serious mistake:
"When nuclear companies are not liable for the huge costs of nuclear risk, what incentive is there for them to avoid it? None."

There is in fact, a very large incentive for nuclear company's to avoid f*** ups like fukushima.
First, it causes support for anti nuclear movements to increase - which mean less reactors get built and less reactors are around to blow up which means less profit for all company's involved.
Second, governments and utilities are less likely to purchase nuclear components and designs from a company with a poor safety history.

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Tom Mallard
says:

From my readings most of the failure was from using MOX fuel in these older reactor designs whose rod systems were made for standard uranium fuel.

From my readings most of the failure was from using MOX fuel in these older reactor designs whose rod systems were made for standard uranium fuel.

The key difference is that normal fuels have two stages during a melt-down so it takes longer, there's a slight pause in the reaction then moves on to a full melt-down while MOX fuel doesn't, it just goes and at a faster rate than standard fuel.

To run the MOX took a lot of software but when the generators went down from the tsunami, in spite of having backup power the rods could not react fast enough thus meltdowns occurred.

This was a fatal mistake to have missed, engineering-wise, this subtle but critical difference.

My opinion, that's criminal neglect, this from being too obvious and basic a physical reality to deal with to miss all the check lists, so, was cut as costing too much in triage where, "what are the odds?", ruled.

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(Unregistered) Danika
says:

That is really awful. The only people who should get money are the people who's lives were torn apart. The companies actually profiting from it is...

That is really awful. The only people who should get money are the people who's lives were torn apart. The companies actually profiting from it is just disgusting. If I had to leave my pet behind no amount of money could make up for that. That is just awful...